In the short term, Microsoft enjoyed a solid decade and a half of massive success and became to a lot of people synonymous with the very idea of the computer.
In the long term, though, it didn’t work out. In 2007, Apple came in with the iPhone, triggering a massive market shift away from the PC and toward the smartphone and tablet — leaving Microsoft in the dust.

These days, Apple is the most valuable company in the world, with the iPhone its crown jewel. Indeed, almost all of Apple’s strategy hinges on protecting the iPhone from any daring upstart while promoting it over the likes of Google Android.

In other words, the iPhone is to Apple in 2015 what Windows was to Microsoft in 1999.

But Apple is doing something differently with the iPhone than Microsoft did with Windows: It’s taking complete control. And keeping it.